The Washington Post in its editorial titled ’ Hitting Tehran where it hurts’ wrote: If the new sanctions imposed on Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) by the Bush administration are to have any meaningful, positive effect on Iranian behavior, they have to be seen as a first step toward pressuring Europe and Japan to curtail their financial relationships with the Iranian regime.

The article added: The IRGC has long operated as a kind of Mafia on steroids – with its own intelligence service, army, navy and financial empire in which Iranian officials enrich themselves through shady deals and brute force. So, why has Washington decided to press ahead now against the Revolutionary Guard? In all likelihood it did so to increase pressure on companies overseas to stop trading with and investing in Iran. The United States has attempted to achieve this through the United Nations, but Security Council resolutions imposing sanctions on Iran have left the IRGC free to conduct its business activities…… The critical challenge for U.S. policy-makers right now is to find a way to persuade the Europeans and the Japanese to join us in circumventing the Security Council.

“Perhaps these governments, and the companies located in them, will think twice about continuing to conduct business as usual with the IRGC and Iran if they believe the new U.S. designation of the IRGC could entail significant business costs for them also,” says attorney Victor Comras, a retired State Department official whose expertise is tracking and stopping the flow of money to terrorists. Mr. Comras (appointed by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 2002 as one of five international monitors overseeing Security Council measures against al Qaeda and the Taliban and repeatedly appointed a senior State Department envoy during the Clinton administration) is sharply critical of current U.N. sanctions against Tehran and the IRGC, which he believes are not nearly tough enough.

Mr. Comras also points out that a number of recent federal court rulings give the United States yet another potential weapon to use against “allies” who look the other way as their companies invest in Iran: The courts have ruled that foreign companies doing business with terrorist organizations may be held liable in U.S. courts by victims of terrorism. The United States has barely begun to use its economic leverage against foreign firms and governments who prop up this rogue mullahcracy.